Learning journal 2.0: refinements for greater heights

The inaugural issue of Learning: Research and Practice (LRP) was published nearly a decade ago. Although this timeframe might not seem extensive compared to many other well-established journals, these ten years may have seemed momentous, especially with the pandemic striking a huge episode in our contemporary lives. Throughout the publication of the previous nine volumes of Learning, we have published a total of 18 issues including 6 special issues. The Chief Editor has shifted from David Hung to Wenli Chen and Elizabeth Koh. We have also witnessed changes among the Associate Editors and Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) members. We extend special recognition to Professor Hyo-Jeong So, who served as an Associate Editor for several years and is now crossing over to the EAB. We warmly welcome the new members who would help broaden, connect, and deepen our scope and diversity.

The year 2023 has brought about new experiences for the journal:

1. Our inaugural EAB online meeting

2. The first special issue webinar “Learning in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence”

We greatly enjoyed the opportunity to connect with many EAB members, gathering invaluable feedback and suggestions on the trajectory and future of the journal. The special issue webinar was held successfully, allowing readers to connect with the authors on a more personal level. We plan to continue organizing webinars for special issues in the future.

Reflecting on the accomplishments achieved and challenges faced in the past decade, we are immensely grateful for the authors who entrusted us with their valuable work, continuously supporting the journal through citations and promotion of the journal in various ways. Our gratitude extends to the reviewers, who generously contributed their expertise and time, and our readers, who have read and even referenced our articles. Equally important are the numerous individuals – current and former editors, assistants, advisors, copyeditors, chairpersons, and others – who have contributed to the journal in various capacities. We extend our heartfelt thanks for their effort and involvement.

As we look towards the future, it is essential that we take stock and define clearer paths to enable the journal to reach greater heights. We have revised our aims and scope. Once affectionately called a “blurb”, the revised aims and scope better articulate and communicate the goal and focus of our journal. Please refer to it here.

In essence, while we welcome a diverse range of scholarship contributions, our foundation remains firmly with the field of education, encompassing learners of all ages and environments. We recognize the complexities of learning and aim to highlight novel perspectives on how learning occurs, the relationships between knowledge, learners, their peers, educators, and tools, and how these processes can be supported or even enhanced, as well as their normative prescription.

We encourage the submission of interdisciplinary work as well as technology-focused manuscripts that provide theoretical and practical insights and takeaways into their contexts, as well as processes and mechanisms. We hope that this refined focus will attract more relevant and significant submissions, enhance our readership, and strengthen the lines of inquiries within the fields of education.

This latest issue 10(1) already reflects some of these developments. We have a bumper issue with five research articles, a brief report, an article commentary and four book reviews.

The first three research articles present theory-based pedagogical interventions that address timely social and geopolitical issues. In the field of peace education research, Masri et al. (2024) developed and enacted an intervention programme to nurture the emotional intelligence and empathy of 287 Arab and Jewish adolescents. This uni-national intervention was intentionally designed and conducted separately with each national group to encourage higher empathy towards the other group. Considering cultural differences, the programme incorporated intergroup contact theory and socio-emotional skill developments and was conducted over twelve sessions. The findings from the mixed methods study generally supported the intervention’s aims, despite some unexpected results. The detailed analysis and rich findings provide a wealth of empirical evidence that can guide the growth of peace education and emotional intelligence research.

Drawing inspiration from Bateman’s (2014) Humanities Model of Inquiry, Mani et al. (2024) designed and implemented the model focusing on the history of pandemics for an online course on the history of medicine in Malaysia. The case study revealed that students’ curiosity was aroused and that it enhanced their historical thinking and communication skills – competencies essential for their future careers in healthcare. Practically, this demonstrates the importance of refining the curriculum for disaster preparation; it also presents a beneficial pedagogical strategy using an inquiry-based approach which can be applied to ever-relevant topics.

Assessment is often considered as part of the outcomes in education research. However, Aras (2024) developed a pedagogical intervention for a teaching practice course with aims of improving pre-service teachers’ interaction skills, using the framework of learner-oriented assessment (Carless, 2007). The qualitative case study found that the intervention enhanced the participants’ child-interaction skills through strategies of implementing more child-centred practices, organizing small group activities, participating in free play, and providing more effective feedback and questioning. This study demonstrates the significance of assessment as learning in contemporary education research, contributing valuable insights to this emerging field.

Turning towards the focus on technology-enhanced learning, Toomey and Heo (2023) explored the relationship between learners’ spatial ability, gender, and cognitive styles and their multimedia resource use behaviour and learning outcomes. A negative relationship between spatial ability and usage of multi-media resources was found. Interestingly, verbalizers used more picture -containing resources. Learners’ spatial ability and gender were correlated with the learning outcomes from multimedia resources. The understanding of how individuals learn and process information in multimedia learning environment and the factors that may impact how people use multimedia resources to learn offers valuable insights for designing effective multimedia resources.

In relation to technology in assessment, Chouhan (Chouhan, 2023) proposed strategies for asynchronous unproctored online quizzes using Google Form for continuous evaluation, and synchronous proctored exams using dual-video and screen-sharing to mimic in-person classroom exams without the necessity of commercial proctoring services. These proposed strategies, which can be easily adopted using free online tools, mitigate the chances of academic dishonesty in online exams to a great extent. This study has practical significance for e-assessment design and implementation across various educational settings.

Recognizing the complexities and diverse perspectives of learning, Esteban-Guitart and Gee (Esteban-Guitart & Gee, 2023) re-defined learning as “life project(s)”. This brief report integrated socio-experiential, cognitive and behavioural dimensions across settings and time, providing two illustrative examples of the learning mechanism. The authors encourage readers to consider the identities of learners when designing education and learning experiences, thereby offering insights to schooling and lifelong learning.

On another end of the spectrum of learning, this issue includes an article commentary that delves into the measures of learning in multimodal learning analytics (Schneider, 2024). Bridging face-to-face and online environments, multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) holds potential for capturing and understanding various learning processes and to impact learning and teaching practices. The commentary explored several challenges including the decision of the multimodal metric, the real-world implementation, and the sharing of metrics with learners and teachers. Beyond elaborating on the challenges, the commentary suggested possible solutions and has provided crucial insights into MMLA and its fast-evolving field.

This issue concludes with four book reviews, covering a wide range of topics from the micro-genetic to the ecological. The reviews are:

• Agustin et al. (2023) for “Multimodal Literacy in School Science: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Pedagogy”

• O’Brien (2024) for “Teaching well: understanding key dynamics of learning-centered classrooms”

• Nur and Nurhaliza (2023) for “Transgressing teacher education strategies for equity, opportunity, and social justice in urban teacher preparation and practice”

• Abdillah et al. (2023) for “The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation”

In the previous nine volumes, we have continuously expanded “the breadth and depth of the knowledge boundaries in learning” (Hung et al., 2015, p. 3). With the issue 10(1), we have begun the next phase of Learning: Research and Practice 2.0, which we hope will yield more impactful scholarship addressing diverse and multi-disciplinary conceptual and practical gaps in understanding the complexities of learning. While we have refined our scope, the core elements of our journal remain unchanged. As stated in our inaugural editorial, we aspire to “to advance the state of our knowledge in new ways of thinking about persistent problems of learning, and also new practical advances in the complexity and ambiguity of the realities in which we have to operate in” (Hung et al., 2015, p. 1).

In the coming years, we do hope that you will join us in this journey as readers, reviewers, authors and more, contributing to Learning. With this clearer direction, it is only with our learning community that we can lift education research and practice to greater heights.